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Chiffon Cupcakes

I have a coworkerfriend (that is a word, I promise) who is obsessed with chiffon cupcakes. He’d never had them before, but saw them on The Food Network, and asked me for months to make them. He’s now… even more obsessed. Turns out, they’re pretty good. The cake is lighter and fluffier than normal cake, because it involves a lot of egg whites, and a lot of whipping of those egg whites.

An important step in chiffon cupcake-making is whipping the egg whites, with a little sugar, for a really long time. This is definitely a recipe that makes me appreciate my stand mixer!

The instructions say to “whip egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks form.” If you’re wondering what that looks like:

Once you can lift the beater out and not have the little peaks fall over, you’re set. All this fluffiness is carefully folded into the rest of the batter, resulting in a mix so light, it feels like you’re scooping bubbles into the cupcake liners.

At the end, you have these super lightweight, fluffy cupcakes with a subtle vanilla flavor, perfect for hosting any flavor of frosting. I admit my coworkerfriend has a point; they’re pretty good. They’re a little similar to angel food cake.

I did try making chiffon cookies-n-cream cupcakes, once, though. They tasted good, but because the batter is so airy, all the cookie crumbs sank to the bottom! Oops! So no mixers for this batter… just straight fluffy yumminess!

PS – eat a cupcake for every time I used the word “fluffy” in this post! Anyone else thinking about the movie Despicable Me now?